You Who I Called Brother
by Nenalata
Summary: Is this all you ever wanted? A story of three decades and two brothers born of divinity.
1. Among the Reeds

"The kingship is a goodly office; it has no son and it has no brother who shall make its monuments endure, but one man provides for the other…"

 _-The Teachings of Merikare_

* * *

Memories, once cherished and frequently revisited, slip through his grasp.

The cold water against his outstretched finger, pulled back by the soft warm hand of his wet nurse. Was she trying to guide him away from the water's edge? Keep him from drinking? Was it time to leave? He can't remember, can only remember his mother's naked back glistening as she leaned over to pick up something. He doesn't know what.

Then, nothing. He remembers the feel of his damp side braid against his shoulder, tickling him. He didn't like it. He reached for his mother, knowing somehow that she was holding his baby brother, but it was _his_ mother, he wanted to feel her touch this instant. Did she hand the baby to the wet nurse? He doesn't remember now, remembers only that she had smoothed the itchy braid away from his shoulder and cupped his face in her comforting brown hand just a little darker than his own. He remembers hands most of all, out of this memory, because he also remembers feeling frustrated that everyone, everyone was too tall to make their faces seen. His brother's smooth but chubby baby hand, waving over the wet nurse's shoulder. The memory's gone. He's never been able to remember those early years. How old must he have been?

He must have been three years old. Moses is three years younger than him.

* * *

He was four years old, he knows, and took great pride in telling Moses that he couldn't share anything that he was learning in the _kap_. Later, when Moses turned four, he too would enter the royal nursery and begin his schooling. But for now, Moses was hardly a year old, his drool shiny on his chin, sleepy and sated after nursing. Rameses can't remember the wet nurse's face anymore, nor her name, nor anything else about the memory save the glee involved with telling his baby brother that he had something Moses did not.

Moses had the wet nurse's attention, those days. Rameses cannot remember how he wailed and reached when first told there would be no more milk after the banquet celebrating his fourth birthday, has no memory of his mother's hand on his face, not gentle—the crack and tingling pain of a blow to his cheek. What he does remember is his jealousy, and the desire to keep something to himself, something that, despite his taunting, Moses will one day have, too.

* * *

It had been Moses's turn to recite, and, seeing as he was five and Rameses was eight, he had the easier task, considering Rameses had long ago memorized _The Eloquent Peasant_. But Moses had always stumbled through his recitations. His memory was good and reliable, but he doubted himself. He does not remember this, but when Moses had first entered the _kap_ , Rameses had welcomed him with open arms, excitement, brotherly affection. Mehy and the other half-siblings of age being schooled in the palace alongside him were dear to him, but Rameses's childish jealousy had grown into protective, comfortable love, and now he looked forward to having his true blood close by for support and the occasional teasing.

But here was not an opportunity for teasing. Nebenteru, the royal tutor, did not dare strike the royal princes, but his disapproval could feel like a blow. Sensitive Moses, for all that he put on a brave face, had never done well in the face of displeasure, whether from family or tutor or even Mehy and his cohort. Rameses remembers watching, tense fingers gripping his ostracon until the knuckles turned white, as Moses rose to recite.

"Then this peasant said to his wife: 'Behold, two bushels of grain shall be left for bread for you and the children,'" Moses rattled off. Even now, remembering, Rameses can picture the words and sounds in his mind perfectly. He had a better memory than Moses, even. He held onto the lessons, the literature, the facts, and the grudges much longer. "'But make for me the six bushels into bread and beer for each of the days that I shall be on the road.' Then this peasant went down to Egypt after he had loaded his asses with all the good produce of—of Sechet-hemat." Moses stumbled, and Rameses tasted blood. Now, he can't remember what he bit—his cheek? his lip? his tongue? But he hasn't forgotten the bitter salt and warmth flooding his mouth, panic for Moses warring with panic for himself. No one had told him the son of a god could bleed.

"This peasant set out and journeyed southward to—Ehnas." Moses's high voice had shaken as he continued. He had held his own so far, but he never could get the next sentence right. "He came to a point—opposite—Pithom—"

Rameses heard the mistake and coughed, loud and hard, sending flecks of blood splattering across his ostracon. The droplets oozed down the slate, and at the sight, Rameses felt as though sand in his head and hands blocked thought, movement. Nebenteru, however, had seen the explosion of red coming from the royal prince's mouth and had cried out in alarm. The other boys craned their heads around, side braids whirling in unison as they stared, first at the tutor, then at Rameses, and it is only through hindsight that this particularly vivid memory sticks with him, because his vision had gone clouded at the time.

Moses had recounted how funny the other students looked later, in the privacy of their own room, after the servants and doctors had decided nothing was wrong except a cut—where had it been?—in the mouth, somewhere, and had departed. Rameses cannot remember what else Moses had said, if he remembers anything at all, because the twirling black braids is practically an organic memory now rather than a whisper from an excited little boy's lips. But Moses's grateful smile when Rameses said around a mouthful of medicine, "'He came to a point opposite _Per-fefi_ ,' you hippo," is clear in Rameses's mind now. That memory, at least, was not a fabrication.

* * *

Rameses remembers this with some measure of bitterness. It is an old memory, but more recent than those early years.

Moses was always ready to be goaded into such pranks. At six years old, he was a rambunctious child, vivacious and prone to sudden fits of laughter. His hair was curly—curlier, rather, than the black locks that made up Rameses's own side braid, and their mother and nurses had long ago given up trying to tame it. They kept his hair cropped short, and when Moses laughed, which was often, his whole face stretched to accommodate the force of his mirth, his ears prominent against his almost-bald scalp.

Rameses had not teased him about this, he knows. The temptation had arisen in their worse fights, and the ears were good to pull when Moses was being especially irritating and they were truly fighting. Moses was self-conscious about how different he looked with his unusual hairstyle all the same. Later, when he was older, he would be gifted a wig of straight black hair, and he would take it off only in the safety of Rameses's sole company. But Mehy and their half-siblings had no such scruples. Even the younger brothers joined in on occasion, following their role models. Moses bore it as well as he could, never crying, but often volleying such clever insults back at his half-siblings as to make them question who was really being picked on. Moses carried some weight as the second-born of the Great Royal Wife, and while he was certainly more than capable of defending himself by crying foul and tattling, he had proved himself precocious and tough enough with his words. Rameses had respected his brother's instinct for survival against unfavorable odds, and as a token of this respect, the bald head and prominent ears went unmentioned between the two of them.

He is too caught up in the details, now. This is not the memory.

They were always finding ways to make palace life more interesting. Some days, it was more exciting to sit, legs dangling over the balcony, and spit date pits over the edge, trying to aim for particular taskmasters' heads, blind to the slaves below. Other days, like this day, they discovered entertainment in the Temple of Ra.

What Rameses mainly remembers is telling Moses, in jest, that Sobek and Tawaret were almost the same god, both fertile and fertility-promoting. Moses was too young to understand why Rameses found this so dirty and hilarious, but he had always delighted in seeing Rameses laugh. Rameses, for his part, was in the middle of switching the heads on the statues of the vulture-headed goddess Mut, Lady of Heaven, with the snouted head of Seth. His younger brother, watching and laughing alongside him, trying to join in on the fun, reached for Sobek's crocodile head. Rameses watched, validating pleasure warming his chest, as Moses swapped the crocodile with Tawaret's hippo head, then the crocodile head with the falcon head of Ra before Rameses, mid-laugh, realized what was happening.

Hotep and Huy took that moment to appear. They were newly inducted priests in those days, and smugly serious about their task. Rameses had not yet begun to study the secrets of the priesthood in earnest, and the two knew it, lording over this small power they had over the royal prince. And then, catching Moses desecrating the Sun God's temple and the Sun God himself while said royal prince watched, was the perfect opportunity to cry blasphemy.

Father had been furious. It was not long before his two favored children stood before him, their eyes downcast and throats cold with fear. Even this flash of remembrance could always make Rameses feel hollow and ashamed. Moses had not once pinned blame on his brother, told the truth and said Rameses had begun swapping statues first. No, Father already knew, even in the face of Moses's loyal silence. What would it do to have two blasphemous sons? What would face them in the afterlife, their hearts heavy with the careless sins of childhood? And Rameses, he would face an even greater burden, held a greater responsibility. Was this to be Seti I's legacy? A spoiled, reckless, desecrating son?

Moses had waited for Father's rage to subside, then had dared to speak up. It had been he, Moses, who had taken the joke too far. Was Rameses at fault for the foolishness of the second-born?

Father had dismissed them in disgust, and after taking their leave, his sons had walked in silence down the alabaster halls. Out of sight of the guards, Moses reached for his hand.

Had Rameses taken it? He must have. He would not have let Moses suffer their father's punishment alone. His brother had taken responsibility, and Rameses knew he would bear the lesser blame because of it. Surely Rameses had not been so callous as to refuse the six-year-old's silent request for comfort. His own strength, he knows, comes from compassion, not solitude.

But the memory of this first of Father's disappointments sticks, acrid and heavy, all the same.

* * *

When Father had taken him along on his military campaigns as a teenager, his practice with Mehy had seemed so long ago. Now, it feels even longer. Mehy was overeager and carried his bow with him everywhere. Such impulsiveness would get him killed later. But for this instant, this moment, he was alive, and calling to Rameses to join him, to go to target practice, that Setau's mother had set up copper plates for them to shoot at.

Rameses had grabbed his own bow and had raced out of the _kap_ , not even thinking to look for Moses. The excitement of the opportunity, the realization that his archery skills were good enough that he could best Mehy in front of his and Setau's mothers, sent him scrambling, his eleven-year-old legs carrying him out of the summer palace with an energy that only the young possess.

But Moses was there, waiting, a serious expression on his face as he strung his bow, an expression that brightened once he caught sight of his brother. Rameses remembers the shift in his brother's facial expression, the lightness in his own heart at the sight warring with the guilt at having forgotten him.

He does not remember the practice, now. He knows he did well. He remembers in fragments: Mehy's mother's tight smile when Rameses sent a copper plate Mehy had missed flying; the weight of the bow in his hand; a vague recollection that it had been especially hot that day; Moses struggling to keep tears at bay as Setau's mother bandaged his hand. It must have been an arrow, certainly not the giving-way of fatigued skin against the bow grip, but Rameses can no longer remember who shot the arrow that injured his brother. It was not him, for certain, and it was not a self-inflicted accident, because Rameses remembers turning on his half-siblings, Mehy and Setau among them, and roaring at them that he would have their heads.

What else does he remember? Moses laughing, a pinched sound, but it had distracted him. "The fearsome pharaoh, frightened by a wound on the second-born's hand," he'd mumbled, so only Rameses could hear, and not risk the half-siblings' mockery. The heat had left Rameses's head then, and he'd laughed, throwing his shoulders back and caution to the wind. He can still remember Mehy and Setau's wide eyes and tense, balled fists, wondering, no doubt, if the mad royal prince was really going to have them executed.

* * *

A memory he does not revisit, and one he cannot even should he wish to. His mother holding his thighs Rameses does not recall, and should he ever wonder why he seems to remember the feel of her fingers pressing in so odd a place, his mind shuts down instantly. It refuses to remember the doctor in front of him, also kneeling, the instruments prodding, pulling, cutting. His own muffled screaming. He will never remember this.

Rameses may, in the lonely and nostalgic corners of his mind late at night, think of the hours after. Those hours he spent lying on his bed healing, when Moses had finally crept in to visit him. His little brother had hummed one of the songs from their childhood, a pleasant thing from the wet nurse, perhaps. It was a sad but tuneful melody that Moses, now ten, had never forgotten and was fond of whistling.

"One day, this will be me lying in my bed, and you singing to me," Moses said softly once his song was finished. "One day soon." Then, a grin had split his face in two. "I'm a much better singer than you, however. I suppose I am much more of a comfort to you, thirteen years old, than you will be to me at this time. No one wants to hear a sixteen-year-old sing."

But this is not late at night. This is now. And Rameses does not think of this.


	2. The Drawing-Out

"Look – Abundance is on the path of god,

and Abundance is written on his shoulder

on the day of his birth."

- _The Teaching of Khety_ ( _The Satire of Trades_ )

* * *

It is not so much a memory as much as it is an emotion, this one flashing through his mind. It is guilt, perhaps, but mostly it is an undefinable stab of anguish in his chest, made all the more powerful by his remembering it now, of all times. He first felt it when he had returned from campaigning with Father.

Rameses had been eager to go, had returned changed. He did not see much of battle himself, though he had experienced his first kill. Father had a Libyan chieftain pinned to the dust, his javelin over his shoulder, the chieftain's guard dying but held aloft in his free hand by the back of the man's neck. Rameses and Mehy, who had hoped to come on this campaign just as much as he had, stood behind their father, watching with wide eyes. For his part, Rameses felt a little sick, a little fascinated.

"Rameses," his father said in a voice that commanded, demanded in the one utterance of his name. Father thrust the dying Libyan at him, and the man stumbled, wheezing, falling on his face at the two fifteen-year-olds' feet. The Libyan's entire body shook, from the hands to the back to the slashed calves, blood mixing with the grit of the landscape. Wheezes rattled his frame. Rameses listened to his father and raised his scimitar and remembers.

But Mehy did not listen when the guard called for him to fall back. Mehy had tried to shoot the bellowing Libyan barreling down on them astride a stolen horse once the blood and grime had been wiped from their weapons. Rameses had ducked and rolled away, and Mehy had shot and missed, and the Libyan had cut Mehy down like so many overgrown reeds, dragging the boy in the dust for several gallops before the spear freed itself from his chest. Father's archers were quicker the moments after, but not quick enough.

Mehy, once his rival, now another brother whom Rameses had outlived, did not have much time to suffer before he went on to the next life. But what he did suffer was great. Rameses will never doubt that. His half-brother did not have air to scream or cry, only blood spilling from his mouth like a memory from the _kap_ so long ago, where sturdy palace walls protected little princelings from every bad thing except authority's disapproval. And now Mehy's death, the vision of the blood flooding from between his open lips and from the deep puncture in his chest, is nothing more than a memory, too.

But the emotion Rameses feels now is for Moses. Rameses does not remember his silent, contemplative journey home from the field, nor who greeted him first upon his arrival to his beloved summer palace, nor how little he spoke to Moses the following days. But the feeling persists. A fierce promise he did not have words to describe burned in his heart when at last he emerged from his chambers. For all the times he had wished Mehy ill, to stop him from rising too high, he had never wished this. With Moses, he would take better care not to tempt fate. Moses he would protect not as his younger brother, but as his equal. Moses he would never have to watch die.

* * *

Rameses does not remember Moses's circumcision. It was not a momentous occasion for him; his own trial into adulthood had passed. But it must have happened, because it happened for all their half-siblings who lived to see it, and this next memory must have been shortly after Moses had healed. Rameses specifically remembers Moses saying he was "old enough to understand these games, Rameses," which amused him because Moses's voice still broke into higher octaves when he got excited, as he did in that moment, regardless of whether he truly had come of age.

Now, Rameses cannot recall which instance of this sentence he hears in his mind for a moment. Moses said it several times, he must have—once, when playing _senet_ ; another, when planning a way to get the prettiest serving girl to feed both of them with her fingers without anyone raising a fuss or seeing; yet another, a foggy memory, when they were crouched on the lap of Rameses's favorite statue, ready to jump? surprise someone? drop something? It slides through his fingers like smoke.

But Moses said it, and often. Often enough for Rameses to understand how fervently Moses wished to be seen not merely as the second-born, but as worthy, deserving of Rameses's respect.

Did Moses know he had it? That he was no longer a tagalong little brother to impress and lecture? That he was both a worthy adversary and trusted confidant? That it was the two of them, warriors against the world, two brothers each worth laughter and secrets and apologies for punches and quiet smiles?

A smile that spoke so simply and conveyed so much that neither of them need say a word.

This, when he turned sixteen, _this_ was what Rameses knew with utmost certainty. They were beyond siblings, beyond Mehy and Setau and Father's many other children vying for his attention. They were— _are_ —blood, divine light flowing through each of their veins.

* * *

Some secrets brothers did not share.

Rameses did not tell Moses where he went after the banquet for his nineteenth birthday, and Moses did not want to know, no doubt, even if he'd guessed.

Nefertari's perfumed skin tasted of honey, the faint smell of lotus clinging to her fingers when he slid them into his mouth. He had watched her all afternoon, enjoying the event all the more for the feast for his eyes she made. In his memory, the linen that had so deliciously draped around her wide hips at the banquet parted at his insistence, her smooth brown skin glowing in lamplight like burnished copper. In reality, this memory is supplied by his current familiarity with her body, because when he'd undressed her that first night, it had been a hurried, excited thing. There had not been time to linger, to appreciate, to let the shadows of flames play on their skin before they touched and slid together. His pleasure Rameses remembers only because it is so constant. The way she touched his face as he panted and gasped his way down from exhilaration is the way she would touch him in all lovemaking to come. It is a comfort, a lovely and loving gesture that bypasses his father's authority. In these moments, they both forget that it had always been decided she would marry him.

It comes to mind now precisely because he has no desire to share this memory with anyone but Nefertari. It comes unbidden. And along with it comes the memory of Moses entertaining guests as the banquet refused to end, telling loud jokes unbefitting the eldest but acceptable in the second-born, long enough for Rameses to slip away unnoticed, the edges of Nefertari's linen robe skirting the hall corner, and he was quick to follow.

* * *

It was the best chariot race of his life then, and to this day, he has never had such an invigorating time with his horses as he did when Moses challenged him, clattering along the roofs and scaffolding of Thebes. If Rameses were to lean back, reminisce, think on this early part of the memory with fondness as he does sometimes, he would be unable to think of another time when he could feel his blood coursing through his veins with such intensity. A time when he felt so alive.

"Second-born, second place!"

Moses hadn't even bristled at that, his laugh echoing off the limestone and mud city even through the din of crashing pottery, yelling townsfolk, whinnying horses, and Rameses's own whoops of delight. They had left utter havoc in their wake, the destruction only two young men at the height of their youth can leave behind with such joy. Their invincibility, their power sent them sailing over the sandstorm, horses screaming and chariot wheels groaning, and carried them back to the palace. Now, he knows such certainty is the mark of a spoiled child. Then, Father's reprimand came as a painful shock.

Once, not too long ago, he had overheard one of his wives—not Nefertari; one of the women in the harem—complaining about a piece of jewelry she had commissioned from a man whom she had believed to be a reputable craftsman. "But there was a weak link in the chain," Sutererey, the wife, explained to Iset-Nofret, his second wife. Rameses did not speak to her for a week, not out of cruelty, but because it took him so long to stop hearing his father spitting those words in his face a decade ago.

Moses could laugh at it all he wanted, and he did. Rameses had been tempted, afterwards, not to give in to his brother's invitation to vent their frustration on Hotep and Huy with borderline blasphemous pranks—to fight with him, to make Moses see things seriously. But in this, at least, he knew better. He can't remember anymore what merciless punishment they must have subjected the priests to, but he remembers arriving to the banquet in high spirits despite their tardiness.

When Father named him Prince Regent, it must have been at Moses's suggestion. Rameses has no proof for this, and most likely, he never will. But being appointed overseer of the temples by the man who, the very same day, had called him the "weak link in the chain" could not be a coincidence. No soothing words from Mother could reach Seti I's heart quite the way his curly-haired brother could. The elation that filled his chest as the crowd roared for their Prince Regent, the tears pricking the corners of his eyes when his father clapped a strong hand on his shoulder, the incense and spices smelling even more enticing than usual, all were Moses's doing.

It had been the right thing to do to name Moses chief architect, for that reason alone if nothing else. It had been the generous thing to do to slide his favorite ring onto Moses's finger, the gold one with the turquoise inset Moses had always coveted. It had been, he'd thought, the brotherly thing to do to send the Midian slave girl to Moses's quarters instead of claiming her for himself. But that was the last time things had ever been as they should be.

His own evening Rameses had spent celebrating with Nefertari in his chambers. It, too, had felt like the proper way to rejoice, to indulge, to bask in his reclaimed glory. It had been a different sort of night, one that he cannot forget no matter how often they repeat the experience. Nefertari had bound his hands with his sheets, pressed on his chest until his back was flush with his bedsheets, and refused to release him, to let him touch her while she peeled away his tunic and focused all her attentions on his pleasure alone. When she was ready for him, the instant she untied his light restraints, he lost all sense and let her do as she wished, murmuring insensible things. No one had ever heard him beg but her.

In the morning, groggy and satisfied, Rameses searched for Moses to begin their plans—either for business or the pleasure of tormenting the high priests—but his brother had made himself scarce. No one had seen him save Mother, and her youngest boy's secrets were always safe with her. Father, had Rameses thought to approach him, he would also have found curiously reticent. His nighttime dreams of grandeur and dynastic glory grappled with nightmares of Moses standing in a river of blood. As it was, when the days passed and Rameses was beginning to lose patience and considering asking the priests, Moses appeared at last. Haggard and with eyes as blank as the sky blessed by a new moon, but there. Normal. By his side, as usual. Ready to plan the next architectural masterpiece with his brother, newly-named Prince Regent.

Rameses cannot remember what he said to Moses. He cannot remember much of that day.

He knows Moses was by his side with the other architects, and then he was not, and then the slaves were groaning and mumbling, the taskmasters unpleasantly silent, the corpse equally so, and then Moses took off running, breaking free of Rameses's arms. He was prepared to die, whether that meant by Pharaoh's order, or by Rameses nearly careening into him with the chariot that he might have won the race with not so long ago.

"I am Egypt, the morning and the evening star! If I say day is night, it will be written, and you will be what I say you are. And I say you are innocent." Truth dripped from his mouth like precious jewels, but Moses cast them all aside. Confusion made Rameses angry in his concern, and the anger made them both violent. They fought, loving embraces twisted into shoves and hard slaps on the shoulder. Finally, Moses pushed, hard, and looked Rameses in the face, his eyes burning like carnelian in the sunlight.

"I'm not who you think I am."

Rameses had wanted to laugh, then, in the face of Moses's lunacy. Who could know Moses better than Rameses? Who could know Rameses better than Moses? Who could look at them side by side and not mistake one for the other, so complementary to each other that they seemed to make up one person?

"What are you talking about?"

But he couldn't laugh when Moses did not laugh first. With a steady gaze and steady footsteps, he turned and headed for the desert, deaf to Rameses's calling, "Moses!"

But no. Not quite immune. Not quite capable of casting Rameses aside like straw caught in a sandal. Their history was too linked, their blood and bond too strong. Moses knew Rameses could not stop him just as much as Rameses knew. He turned, looked his brother in the eye one last time. Dark eyes met dark eyes, shining in the arid, choking heat of early evening.

Rameses is wrong, to have thought before that only one person has ever heard him plead.

And the desert swallowed his brother whole.


	3. Here I Am

"Put no trust in a brother, acknowledge no one as a friend, do not raise up for yourself intimate companions, for nothing is to be gained from them. _"_

- _The Teachings of Amenemhet_

"'Who made you a ruler and judge over us? _'"_

-Exodus 2:14

* * *

Rameses tries not to remember the days and weeks following Moses's flight. He tries not to remember the new creases and lines in Father's face, Mother's puffy eyes and seclusion, Hotep and Huy's poorly concealed delight. Moses might have been safer, had he stayed. It was doubtful Father truly would have his beloved son executed over the death of one taskmaster. But if Moses had survived the desert and desired to come home…Even Father had no answer for what would happen to him, then. And Father had fewer and fewer answers as the days wore on.

By the time his father could not rise from bed any longer, Rameses was accustomed to sitting in his favorite statue's lap, brooding over the horizon. Most of his memories from this time are the sights of Thebes and the waning phases of the moon rising above the city. If he looked far enough, if he sat long enough, perhaps he would see Moses stumbling up the palace stairs.

But life and death went on, the only things they knew how to do. And Moses did not return, lost to the desert storms.

* * *

The days following Father's death were long.

Rameses had gone to pay his respects in the final days. His father, weak in illness though he was, had been strong and unafraid until the end, ready for the next world. He had searched for Rameses's hand, and Rameses had been quick to place it in his father's dry palm.

"I know you will do well by the Dynasty," was all that the pharoh said. Father had retracted his papery hand then, and at Mother's nod, mother and son left him to his rest. The falcon had flown to heaven three days later, and Rameses had not time to be bitter. He had a throne to ascend.

It was the first and only time he had let his beard grow, mourning a father he had never managed to impress. When the palace gates closed and Rameses set out on his grand Nile tour of the kingdom, his heart was calm. He had been born for this. Divinity was his calling. Not Setau's. Not Mehy's. Not even Moses's. And he would bring their proud history even greater glory. Father, in the next world, would see and smile.

The coronation itself took place in Thebes, on familiar soil, once the tour was complete, at the end of the Season of Harvest. Stony-faced, Rameses allowed the purifying waters to wash over him, felt the oils anoint him, let himself be transformed from man into god. Had Hotep, had Huy seen godhood pass through him and possess him while they performed their duties? Rameses had surely felt it. By the time the eight crowns of Egypt adorned his head, after the inheritance of Horus, after releasing the birds into the four cardinal directions, by the time the banquet began, Rameses felt ready to usher in a new dawn for Egypt. The funeral was still a long way off, but the future would not wait.

"The justice of Ra is powerful—chosen of Ra."

"Ra has fashioned him, beloved of Amun."

"The strong bull, beloved of right, truth."

"Protector of Egypt who curbs foreign lands."

"Rich in years—great in victories."

"Rameses II."

His new names, rather than weighing him down, filled him with hope. _He_ had been chosen. _He_ was divine. _He_ had survived, beaten the odds, to claim this right.

He wishes Moses could have feasted with him. He wishes his memory had included his second-hand second-born reclining on his chair, shoveling ox meat into his mouth chased by beer, rejecting any napkins servants attempted to offer him. He wishes they could have sneaked off at some point to torment the priests one final time, maybe by—maybe by—

Rameses has no idea what they would have done. Moses always knew how to make him laugh. And Moses had not been there.

* * *

Moses would have been married, too, by the time Nefertari was confined for childbirth. Several potential wives had been introduced to him in his later teen years, but none of them had lasted. Rameses and Moses were too excitable, out swimming or hunting in the marshes or with other prettier women, and Moses had the impatience of youth. He was not ready, Father always said, but with a certain fondness that he seemed to reserve only for his second son.

Rameses could have used Moses's wit and easygoing nature while he waited to hear the news. From his knowledge of the priesthood, both in his studies as a child in the _kap_ and from his brief time as Prince Regent, he knew of the charms, the spells, the medical procedures involved in childbirth. But reality was another story, and images of Hotep and Huy sabotaging the birth in the name of petty revenge haunted him as the hours passed.

But it had not gone that way. She had survived. And his son—a son!—had survived, as well. The fourteen days he had to wait to see them were excruciating. Then, he cared so little for news of the Sherden pirates attacking their cargo ships, for repressing slave revolts, for reviewing masonry orders of his great building projects. When Huy appeared with a greasy smile and informed him that Nefertari and the child were ready for him, it took all of Rameses's self-restraint to keep his steps measured, his shoulders back and head high.

He has never forgotten his first sight of Amun-her-khepshef, his small face blinking intelligent dark eyes at him from nestled in Nefertari's arms. While the feeling, the memory of his soft baby skin has shifted as his son has grown and strengthened into a fine young boy, that first blink, that first slow yawn and quiet mewling cry is burned into Rameses's ears and eyes.

He is not a man to cry, and he did not. New children are now familiar to him, a continuous masculine pride and a dwindling anxiety. But giving Amun-her-khepshef his first blessing, the blessing that his own father must have given him once, brought him to a new understanding of emotion.

As Ra is the father of mankind, Rameses is the father of Egypt. His children would know their father's love and pride until the end of days. He will not make his own father's mistake.

He did not think of Moses when he asked Nefertari if he could hold his son. But in this volley of recollections storming the gates of his brain, this memory comes to mind all the same.

* * *

When the day of Seti I's funeral arrived, it came as a certain peace. After the initial funerary procession, it had taken much longer than the traditional seventy days to prepare the body for burial. The cold acceptance in Rameses's chest of his father's death had, as the hundredth day come on, shifted into nervousness, then, after the birth of his son, descended into impatience. As long as Father remained unprepared for the afterlife, there was still a chance that his _ka_ would continue to haunt his first-born son.

The day of the funeral dawned sweltering hot. As the men poured milk on the path of the procession, the soil soaked up the libations within seconds. The dust the mourners heaped on their heads in between wails crumbled in their fingers, and Rameses's own tongue sat in his mouth like a dry leaf. He willed cool breezes, channeled the wind, but sweat trickled down his forehead all the same under his _khat_ headdress. The air would not bend to his will.

Frustration accompanies this flash of memory. His eyes darted everywhere: first to the mourners, beating their chests and keening; then to the offering stalls set up along the route, the air sizzling with sunlight and roasted duck; then to the slaves bearing the boat; then to his father; then back at the mourners. It was a whirlwind to his senses, and it never seemed to end. He remembers it taking an eternity and a half to reach the Valley of the Kings.

Seti I's mummy, raised upright to greet the sun, takes up the whole of Rameses's remembrance at this time. He cannot remember the _muu_ -dancers whirling around his father's body, in front of the tomb, around Hotep and Huy. He cannot remember how he coughed when sand whirled around the mummy and blew into his mouth—a good omen, some priests later said. He does remember staring into the blank eyes, taking deep breaths, clearing his energy of resentment. The man is dead. Rameses will not have to see him for a long time. And when he does, he will go with a light heart and a new legacy.

The opening of the mouth is what he remembers most.

Rameses was the _sem_ priest for this ceremony, and it was a role he relished. He touched his father's nose, to breathe in the afterlife. He touched his father's mouth, to speak, to yell. He touched his father's ear, to hear the Egyptian people cry for him, sing praises of his son. He touched his father's eyes, to look upon a new history from afar. Father would go into the afterlife aware of what is beginning.

When Rameses descended into Father's tomb, once the workers had placed the mummy into the sarcophagus, the sun warming his back gave him strength, peace of mind. It was now his turn to rule. And someday, when he is laid to rest in the tomb he has already been consulting the architects to design, he will go to the other world with even more contentment, the satisfaction in knowing he has ruled well.

He had brought more offerings than needed. Moses would have liked him to do so, for him, Rameses imagined.

He stepped out of the tomb, the last mourner to do so, and the workers sealed the entrance behind him. The sun was unrelenting, but perhaps more bearable than it was earlier. The reign of Rameses II had truly begun, Ra smiling his scorching praise on Egypt, and all was as it should have been.

* * *

Rameses does not truly remember the Battle of Kadesh, but his people will not let him forget it. There are steles, etchings, stories, songs for a battle that did not end well. Rameses cannot decide if he should be affronted or infuriated by the sheer amount of material circulating his kingdom, or if he should be pleased that his people view him as a peace-bringer. He would rather be thought of as a warrior, he thinks.

But the fear that had clenched his heart when he stood, alone save Menena his shield-bearer, surrounded on all sides by Hittite charioteers, that fear had not been the fear of a warrior. He does not think of this moment often.

When the support troops finally arrived, Rameses had turned that fear into action. His own throat was hoarse for days upon returning to his longed-for palace, partly due to smoke, partly due to his own war bellows and fervent shouted prayers to Amun. The blood sticking to his body splattered red on his blue armor must have made him a godly sight as he reproached his first army, the cowards who had not risked joining him. What had he said?

"Have I not done good to any of you, that you should leave me alone in the midst of battle? You are lucky to be alive at all!"

He had screamed something like that, something furious, something that he hoped had not betrayed his fear. Rameses had demanded his loyal horses eat with him at mealtimes in the palace for weeks after that, with Menena welcome to join the royal family, for standing true and strong by him in his darkest hour. It had been, perhaps, a fit of frightened madness that had compelled him to keep the stablemaster bringing his mounts up the monumental stairs of the palace for so long a time. But it had kept his soldiers in check, as munition and training went on in Pi-Rameses, formerly the summer palace of his and Moses's youth, whose design and building he has slaved over for years. They would never dare to abandon their pharaoh again.

That fear, that terrible, suffocating fear of being left alone, vulnerable and almost mortal, had never haunted him so profoundly. In his youth, he had never been one to cry out for company in the darkness of his rooms in the _kap_ ; that had been Moses's weakness. Rameses had been the source of comfort for Moses; for Setau; for the half-sisters; once, even, for Mehy. He had hushed them quickly and quietly. When Moses, sobbing at the age of seven after a nightmare of fire and living trees, had sought him out even though he was too old for such nonsense, Rameses had let him sleep in his bed with him, humming the tune Moses always seemed to whistle, the one from the wet nurse he can no longer remember. Solitude had never been Rameses's greatest discomfort.

But when Rameses returned home from Kadesh with his troops silent and diligent behind him, when he set the Blue Crown of war aside in the privacy of his own chambers, it was not long before he felt the sensation of loneliness sinking its claws into his spine. He wished—

He could not have shame. He was Pharaoh, Egypt, the morning and the evening star. With an even stride, he made his way to the _kap_. As if sensing the divine presence of his father, Amun-her-khepshef was standing in the main foyer, hunched over a problem set on his slate. Rameses took a measured breath, smiled, and the slate clattered to the tiles as his son raced into his arms.

* * *

But Rameses is not trapped in the past. He is here, seated on his throne, his son by his side. It is the present, and it is now when the memories assault him.

In bursts like sunbeams, these memories flash through Rameses's mind, flitting one after another, surges of emotion and color too quick to remember with the proper lingering care. It is his son's birthday, and the chaos of music and movement and the cheers of the crowd is equal parts delightful and distracting. But what is the most disconcerting, the thing that sends these confusing remembrances coming into his mind all at once in a flurry of painful hope that Rameses has long thought he had outgrown, is a guest. The dancers weaving their way through the banquet hall keep giving him glimpses of a man, but every time their colored banners twirl, he can only make out fragments. A sun-beaten wrist. A red robe. A shepherd's staff. A curly beard.

By the time the dancers and musicians stop their relentless motion, Rameses is certain. His heart is so full he fears it will choke him to death, burst in his chest like a fig between teeth. He dimly becomes aware that his son has inclined his head his way, wishing to ask, but Rameses is already stampeding down the throne steps, undignified with electric skin.

His blood feels like it wants to burn his veins dry.

The dancers scurry out of his way as he calls out to his brother, his _brother_ , it must be him. He can't contain his smile, his lips about to crack. This is beyond happiness. This is beyond elation. This is _joy_ , the impossibility of reality fighting back a decade of nightmares and visceral hypotheticals.

"Rameses?" And yes, it's his brother's voice. It is Moses, his face scraggly like someone has died and he is in mourning, his hair curling around his ears like a peasant, his heavy robes ridiculous and dripping sand on the tiles, but it is his voice, and his face, and those are his brother's arms around him. Rameses is embracing the dead, and in this moment, he forgets where he is. His people watch the pharaoh become human, and he has no care for their shock. They are chattering at each other, heedless of the eyes and ears, like little boys again, and Moses _laughs_ , and it's the holiest music.

They are older now, more lines in their faces—his, at least—and Moses's is weathered, but both are smiling, happy to be alive. Rameses wants to know all, but that is a time for later. He will hold another banquet tomorrow afternoon, and tonight there will be _revels_ —

Hotep and Huy clear their throats behind him, and Rameses is in such high spirits he does not have time to be irritated with their clear disdain for a prince of the blood returned home. "Be still," he commands, but his voice is light-hearted. "Pharaoh speaks. I am the morning and the evening star," he says, more memories flying from his lips. He holds up a hand to stop Moses's modest protests. "It shall be as I say. I pardon forever all crimes from which he stands accused, and will have it known that he is our brother," the word chokes him for a moment, "Moses, prince of Egypt."

There is silence from the crowd, awed by Pharaoh's mercy. There is silence from Moses. It is not a grateful silence. Rameses's hands still grip Moses's shoulders, the smile waiting on his face.

"Rameses," Moses says, drawing in a deep breath, and it is only now that Rameses looks behind his brother to see a woman, her face vaguely tapping at his memory, "in my heart you are my brother. But things cannot be as they were."

"I see no reason why not," Rameses laughs, but the smile is beginning to freeze on his face, like it has been held there for too long.

Moses's eyes are unfamiliar to him like this, serious and without a trace of mirth. "You know I am a Hebrew," he proclaims, loud enough for the guests to begin murmuring, and shock ripples through Rameses's stomach, "and the God of the Hebrews came to me."

"What?" His hands, at last, slip from his brother's shoulders. The words have not registered, but Moses has not finished.

"He commands," Moses says, the look on his face hard and closed, the face of a secret-keeper, "that you let his people go."

The guests are not subtle in their murmurs, his joy slipping into cold confusion. "Commands?" Rameses steps back and recoils, does not realize he has done so. His hands are on his hips, disdain rolling from his frame, and this is not a position he has taken for a long, long time. The last time he had stood like this, he had been eleven and Moses had been eight, and Moses was throwing a tantrum because Rameses had broken his favorite spinning top. "I demand an apology!" Moses had cried, tears and snot dripping down his face, and Rameses had laughed to see such a disgusting sight, to hear such an outlandish request of the successor to the Egyptian throne.

Moses must recognize the pose, but he does not flinch. "Behold," he says, raising his staff, his voice so somber that Rameses wants to laugh all over again, "the power of God."

Rameses watches, suitably unimpressed, as the shepherd's staff slides from Moses's grasp and looks like a serpent. Whatever crazy nomads' god Moses has found while wandering the desert or marshes or who-knows-where, Moses has given his body, soul, and salvation to it. Rameses takes a deep breath. If Moses had succumbed to madness in the years since his presumed death, things would be much harder and much more embarrassing. But rebellious, temporary blasphemy is to be expected.

Rameses ascends his throne once more and sets Hotep and Huy to task. They will not impress Moses, who always had the same contempt for them as he. But they will calm the gossiping crowds, and the magic will entertain his son. As he gestures for Amun-her-khepshef to sit by his side, he takes the boy into the crook of his arm and gives him a single, reassuring squeeze. With his elation cooling into something that tastes almost like disappointment, he can remember once more that it is his son's birthday.

The two of them watch the spectacle with pleasure, and by the time Rameses gestures for Moses to follow him, the banquet is in fine spirits once again.

He forces himself to laugh once they are behind closed doors. "I know you," he says, confidence growing with each step. This man he calls brother is the only person beyond himself of whom he can claim understanding. Time means little when it comes to immortal family. "What's this really about?" The air is cooler when he removes his _khat_ , a quick bite of fresh air restoring sense to the world.

And Moses cannot join the real world. He disparages the rising walls of the large temples, the distant colossal statues almost complete, the visions of a growing and thriving kingdom, and does not see the greater Egypt, the expansion upon what Father had accomplished. It is his shortcoming as the second-born. It is petty jealousy. It is a thing from childhood, and Rameses laughs it off, when the truth is he and Moses are too old for games such as these.

Another memory coursing past his eyes. He can almost see it as Moses stands in front of him.

"I have to maintain the ancient traditions," Rameses explains slowly, before the memory can get the best of him. He has explained this before, to his son. And his own father had explained it to him, countless times. "I bear the weight of my father's crown."

"Do you still not understand what Seti was?" Moses accuses him, and the word, the disrespectful naming of their father digs somewhere deep in his chest.

"He was—" it is easier to admit in public, but he is unused to such conversations with his brother, "—a great leader." His father's _ka_ must surely smile on him.

But when Moses accuses him of being like his father, the father whom he has just been forced to praise, Rameses sees red.

Perhaps Moses had not put it into such terms. He must have been going on about the plight of the Hebrew workers, something he seemed obsessed with. He has probably tormented himself for a decade, after hearing somewhere that he is a Hebrew. But to say that Rameses is causing suffering the way his father had, to compare the two of them without raising Rameses up…

Moses knows this is a low blow. Moses knows this is a point not to be touched, like his big ears and childhood shaved head. And yet, and yet, and yet.

The memories assault his vision. This is not the Moses he knows. But only Moses could aggravate him in such a way. Only Moses could know where to stick his sharp little nails. Only a brother's love could twist into a brother's cruel revenge.

Moses did not come here, however, to be a brother. That much is clear, now. And it _hurts_ , and the pain makes him angry.

"So," Rameses finally manages to say. "You have returned…" He cannot remember the face of the murdered taskmaster all those years ago. "Only to free them."

It is a long moment of silence that stretches between them, their shared history and diverging paths buzzing in the space that separates their bodies. Slowly, painfully slowly but much too fast, Moses removes the turquoise ring that Rameses has only just noticed still on his finger—no, not any longer. It jangles, abrupt and loud, onto his father's old throne.

"I'm sorry."

A thousand times Moses has apologized for stupid, inconsiderate things. A thousand times Rameses has forgiven him, sometimes with a playful slap on the cheek, other times with an arm slung around his shoulder. The apology irritates him now more than any other slight could have. With a ginger, delicate touch, Rameses picks up the ring, holds it in front of his eyes. Turquoise and gold from another life, another banquet, another memory juxtaposes against Moses's downcast expression from where he hides behind it.

Memories bombard him, howling their joys and their sorrows and their laughter and their screams and their tears and the cacophony of sensation, emotion for a moment spins the room. Moses is as still as a statue, like the mummy in Father's sarcophagus, like a carving in a wall that will one day be rubbed out by an overambitious king. Rameses's stomach lurches, then boils, his fingers trembling around the ring that should have stayed in Egypt for the rest of time, but a pharaoh cannot show weakness, a pharaoh cannot cry. "Yes…I had hoped—"

But no, not yet. A lifetime passes before him, then begins again. The sounds and smells of Egypt accost him, and Moses is standing still, and the turquoise is sickly green-blue like a drowned corpse. It is just an instant, it is two brothers' entire lives spinning ahead of them, each in opposite directions, and if he stares long enough, perhaps he can pluck out Moses's secrets from his mind, find out what has changed him these past ten years, who that woman he left in the banquet hall is, why he must come back, come home, after all this time only to send a sword through his heart—The thoughts are too loud, the memories too constant—

 _Be still!_

When Rameses finds words, rises, it is Pharaoh who speaks. "I do not know this God," he says, voice like a raised scimitar. He places his _khat_ back on his skull, finality in the gesture. He stalks over to Moses, and in a remnant of their childhood, the part of Rameses that could never resist a final punch long after the matter was settled, he shoves the man's chest. "Neither will I let your people go."

"Rameses, please, you must listen—"

"I will not be the weak link!" Rameses shouts, voice cracking, whirling around to stab an accusing finger at the infuriatingly peacemaking Moses, a joker who has never been to war, a man who has never had such responsibility, such pressure, such anything. A man who is no brother Rameses has ever known stands in front of him, stepping on the memory of their dead father. Rameses is pharaoh now, and neither man holds power over him now. He pushes open the doors. The banquet stretches out before him, dance and laughter and pleasing melodies humming their way towards him. Normalcy. Joy. Family.

What are these things, now?

"Tell your people," he says, struggling to calm his tone, speaking of slaves he has not thought of twice these past thirty-three years, "that as of today, their workload has been doubled, thanks to your God. Or is it thanks to you?"

With the parting words of a child winning a fight, Rameses slams the door behind him, hiding Moses's shining dark eyes, unfamiliar garb, magician's staff, curling hair.

Rameses does not know him, this man he once called brother. But he does know his heart has been hardened, smooth like the walls of his palace and five times as durable. He will not admit that only a brother can tear down walls as easily as Rameses can build them.

 **[end]**


End file.
